Asus wired only thoughts & twist

[manners]

So my query may seem like yet another "which router should I buy" but I have a bit of a twist. I live in a moderately large house with three floors - ground, 1st floor and 3rd. My telephone line comes in on the ground floor under the stairs along with all my other hidden away tech - server, swicth etc etc. Currently I have an N66u running Merlin in there doing routing and servicing ground floor WiFi needs and a Unifi AP on the 1st floor attempting to do rest of house WiFi. Basically this set up is no longer any good. The Unifi AP doesn't play nice, there's too many different WiFi signals in my neighbourhood so channel management is a headache, switching SSID is not great for the family and I want AC. So I've done some testing with the N66u routing only with WiFi radios off and a Nighthawk 7000 borrowed from work in AP mode on the 1st floor it gets decent coverage and basically seems to do the job.

So what I want to do is this:

1.) Upgrade the N66u to another Asus which runs Merlin but has a beefier CPU (I get high utilisation with VPN, downloads etc) and some of the newer traffic management options to run purely in wired only mode for routing. Which Asus would do the job bearing in mind cost consideration? The ac56u/68u maybe?

2.) Get an AC router running in AP mode to do whole house WiFi. I would prefer Asus and Merlin but my reliance on Asus-Merlin is for routing/VPN/DNS so this could actually be any manufacturer. The most important thing here is range, reliability and an AP mode which just works. I have considered an actual AP such as the RP-AC68u and other manufacturers but it's not any cheaper than getting a router and putting it into AP mode. I am tempted by the RP-AC68u because it just looks cool.

I know some people's imemdiate thought would be - just get a dedicated wired only router (like the erlite3 ubiquity) and some dedicated APs (Unifi etc). The issue with this is Merlin's firmware has everything I want in exactly the way I want for routing and dedicated APs are just as expensive and other than the bleeding edge Eero offer no zero handoff roaming advantages.

Thoughts, opinions and recommendations welcomed!

 

[RMerlin]

The RT-AC56U is a good choice as your primary router. If you want a little bit more performance and the price difference isn't a problem, look at the RT-AC68U (ideally a newer revision with the 1 GHz CPU).

For the Wifi part, the RT-AC68U is still a good compromise in terms of price/performance. I don't know enough about the RP-AC68U to comment on it.

 

[gatorback]

It sounds like you are well aware of your options, however, without a scale floor-by-floor map-plan of radio placement, it is impossible for the community to visualize and make a constructive comment. That being said, it sounds like you are highly cost sensitive, so maybe a $100 T-Mobile cellspot (RT-AC68U) should be considered.